Tom Bivens just picked up a new nonce word that he thinks may make it into the language. The Web has, in fact, made it easier for (mis)created words to creep into common usage, so he may be right. Here is what Tom wrote:

“Smove is not a word yet but it’s about to be. I am hearing it and seeing it in writing more often. It means to smile and move on.”

Of course, it doesn’t mean that to you and me because it isn’t a word in the English vocabulary yet. It is a blend, two words simply smushed together. Blending is popular means of creating new words among reporters, publicists, and marketers, the source of such common blends that did stick as smog and motel. The rules of English create words with prefixes and suffixes, though, since English prefixes and suffixes have been vanishing for centuries, we have had to resort to more radical means of creating neologisms (new words).

I wrote Tom that I’m going to wait for this one. Oddities are like blog, phish, and frenemy) are flooding the language. Now, I’m not a grammar Nazi; I’m willing to accept them if they are forced down my throat. Like these other “words”, Smove is not formed by a rule of the English language but a logical rule that says that smushing two words together smushes their meanings together in understandable ways.

As I told my linguistics students for a couple of decades, we created English so we can do with it what we please. However, there should be some sort of democratic majority behind whatever changes we make and that is what grammatical rules are supposed to form. Nonce words make coagulating such majority support for a word difficult.

A nonce word is a word created for a specific occasion or situation that eventually evaporates leaving no use for the word. The problem with nonce words, aside from their evanescence, is that they have to be wholly memorized. Words like memory chip (actually one compound word), processor, and networks that we use in speaking about computers don’t require any explanation; we pick them up straightway. Someone has to tell us what words like phish, chad, blog, frenemy mean, so they interrupt the flow of conversation and actually hinder communication.

I am grateful to Tom for tipping me off, though. I do like to spot these new creatures before they bite me. My throat is so sore from swallowing so many already, what harm could one more do?